“Empathy unites us heart to heart”
The aspect that most fascinates me about my website is this section called “blog”. It is a precious casket in which I keep random thoughts. A kind of diary. I’m drafting my book of wild journeys I’ve made over the past ten years and from time to time I embellish this digital wedding photography page with topics for which I’m too long-winded.
For the uninitiated I am a photographer specialized in the wedding. For six months a year I work mainly between Lucania, Puglia and Sicily and for six months… I travel. I travel in a wild and genuine way. It happens to walk kilometers on foot with a backpack, it happens to sleep in a tent in the middle of nature, to fly to China, just by chance and then find oneself on a lost island in the Mediterranean.
What pushes me to always explore new horizons? Empathy!
In this regard, I thought of writing these words on this beautiful sunny Sicilian morning. I have a robin to keep me company and I’m inebriated by the scent of lemons in my garden. It’s the 30th of January at 8:30 o’clock. During my trip to China, one of the last overseas, I met a wise old man in the narrow streets of Old Shanghai who handed me a parchment out of nowhere. To decipher the message, I went to a pseudo-Italian restaurant whose owners spoke Chinese and Roman. I had the message translated:
“If we change ourselves we can change the world and this change begins with a change in language and communication”
But what about all this rant with a wedding photography blog? It is part of it. Everything is connected. For example, in the photographic field, I have always tried to create psychological bridges of connections between myself and my clients who I affectionately define as “my spouses”. It’s not what we do that really counts. We are professionals and we can create an excellent photographic work, but what really counts is the quality of our attention
What I want and I have always researched in my work is empathy, a continuous exchange between myself and my clients based on mutual giving from the heart. Empathy has always allowed me to perceive my “photographic” world in a new way and go beyond it. I like working with empathic couples. Those who don’t seem to possess this gift naturally go elsewhere.
Empathy is a respectful understanding of what others are feeling.
As photographers, we have to respectfully understand who we face, but not only us, everything must be mutual. Recently a couple wrote about me:
“We met Serena way back in 2019. We were looking for an unobtrusive photographer with a personal and non-trivial style. Candid photos that captured the moment. We can say after four years and two weddings that we have found all this and more. She is an excellent professional, a beautiful and empathetic person
The review continues but I’ll stop here to avoid going off topic. The words of Agata and Giuseppe moved me as they speak of empathy.
The Chinese philosopher Chuang-Tzu, one of the two pillars of Taoism with Lao-Tzu, claimed that true empathy requires us to listen with our whole being. One thing is that listening that is only in the ears. Another thing is listening and understanding. But the listening of the spirit is not limited to any faculty, ears or mind. It requires that all faculties be empty. And when the faculties are empty, the whole being listens. We then directly grasp what is right there in front of us, which can never be heard with the ear or understood with the mind.
We must strengthen our ability to remain human. Everyone!